September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Usually I begin a blog posting with sewing, quilting, or embroidery techniques and tips. This time I thought it would be appropriate to begin by passing along the early symptoms of ovarian cancer.

Be Aware

In some cases, ovarian cancer may cause early symptoms. The most common symptoms of ovarian cancer as reported by Mount Sinai Hospital include:

Abdominal Bloating

Feeling full quickly while eating

Pelvic or abdominal pain or pressure

Urinary urgency or frequency

Changes in bowel habits

Abnormal vaginal bleeding or discharge

Back pain

Unexplained weight gain or loss

If you have one or more of these symptoms, and it occurs almost daily for more than two or three weeks, talk with your doctor.

Be Creative!

Use the embroidery designs to add awareness. Here’s how I embellished a scarf.

First, I hooped the scarf with a wash-away stabilizer behind the fabric. (You can’t see the stabilizer in this photo, but you’ll see it in a later photo.)

After printing out the template of the embroidery design, I positioned it at an angle on my scarf.

I placed a positioning sticker on the fabric directly underneath the crossmark on the template. This is Baby Lock’s positioning sticker, but you can use other versions.

After attaching the hoop to my machine’s embroidery unit, I depressed the scanning feature. The camera in my Baby Lock Ellisimo Gold looked for the positioning sticker and aligned the embroidery at the same angle. When the machine embroidered the design, it was just where I wanted it—a pretty amazing feature!

At this point, the machine was ready to stitch the embroidery at the same angle that I determined.

After the embroidery was complete, I tore away the water-soluble topping stabilizer and spritzed the remaining stabilizer with water to remove the excess.

I removed the fabric from the hoop and cut away the excess stabilizer on the back of the design. Note: You can immerse the fabric in water to remove the excess water-soluble stabilizer, providing the scarf fabric is washable!

12 Comments

Thanks Nancy for writing this educational type article. I learn lot on embroidery work and hope to change our Embroidery work on Pashmina Shawl.

PamOctober 5, 2014

This is wonderful information! A wonderful project for fun raising!
I have one question. How many layers of the water soluble stabilizer did you use?
I have been decorating pashmina shawls for quite a while and it always seemed I was using the wrong stabilizer! Now that I know it seems one layer is much too thin. I really would appreciate your answer. Thank you in advance!

On May 30, 2014 my best friend lost her battle with this disease. She fought long and hard but it was not to be. This will creep up on you if you aren’t vigilant. Please get your self checked, if anything doesn’t seem right, don’t wait. It is one of the deadliest and most aggressive cancers. Chemo does not always work and neither does surgery with ovarian cancer.

E. Sharon SmithSeptember 6, 2014

Thank-you Nancy for posting this information! I was diagnosed July 29th with Ovarian Cancer. I will have 6 total Chemo therapy’s with surgery in between. It’s not an easy disease to go through, but friends, family and even strangers have shown so much love during this transition period.
Thanks again for sharing this info,
~Sharon

StarlaSeptember 6, 2014

Thanks sharing this important information!

DorothySeptember 6, 2014

is beautiful I wish my embroidery machine had all those wonderful new features. I can still accomplish this beautiful scarf, it just takes longer.

LydiaSeptember 6, 2014

very inspirational tribute to Helen Gardner, and thank you for getting this important information out to your readers

I would add that these symptoms are like many other illnesses. By the time a person goes to the doctor, they are often too far along in the disease to survive. My mother died of Ovarian C back when I was a teen. She was only 38 years old. By the time the cancer was diagnosed, she only had another 2 and a half months left. It is a very stealthy disease!

BeverlySeptember 6, 2014

Thank you for adding this information about Ovarian Cancer. My wonderful Grandmother Carolyn died of OC at age 88. Her life was full of sewing, flowers, 4-H sewing students and food. Only this somewhat undetectable cancer took her away.

Thank you for the special post.

BrunellaSeptember 6, 2014

Thanks for sharing the life-saving information about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. The scarf is lovely and meaningful as well!

RobynSeptember 6, 2014

Thank you for the great ideas and easy to follow instructions! As a nurse with many years of oncology experience, I can tell you that many patients would appreciate these scarfs. Thanks again!